Tag Archives: Andy Coulson

Murdoch MacLennan: just given former jailed News of the World editor Andy Coulson a £200,000 plus contract as pr man for the Telegraph group. Pic credit: Press Gazette

CROSS POSTED ON BYLINE.COM

This is Murdoch MacLennan, chief executive of the Telegraph Group, board member of the body that bankrolls the Independent Press Standards Organisation, and friend of Andy Coulson the former jailed editor of the News of the World, and former David Cameron Downing Street press spokesman.

As Roy Greenslade revealed in The Guardian he has just given a lucrative contract to Andy Coulson to handle public relations for the Telegraph Group.

Tim Fenton in his Zelo Streetblog describes the whole sorry saga of Andy Coulson and how Murdoch MacLennan stood by the beleaguered former News of the World editor by providing him with a character reference in court before he was sent down.

However his take up of a £200,000 plus job – already met with horror among some Telegraph journalists – is also in the sense a damning reflection of the body, the Independent Press Standards Organisation.

MacLennan is a director of the Regulatory Funding Company which raises levies from the newspaper industry to pay for its work in upholding press standards and handling complaints.

While I am not suggesting – as safeguards are written into the funding arrangements that he would influence any complaint against his newspaper group – it nevertheless reflects badly on IPSO that someone on its funding board does not believe that Andy Coulson did anything wrong.

How are we to believe that IPSO really stands by such high standards when it turns a blind eye to such a breach of standards. I put this point to IPSO today and their reply dodges the issue.

“IPSO does not comment on appointments made by any of our 86 publishers”, said a spokesman.

But given the flack the rival press standards body, Impress, has faced in the media because it was funded by Max Mosley, that seemed a fair question.

Murdoch MacLennan is part of the media Establishment as Tim Fenton points out. He also is no friend of transparency – given if you check the remarkably uninformative Telegraph Media accounts at Companies House – his salary is hidden from public view. Given he is chief executive he could be the highest paid director – earning £900,000 a year in 2016. That might explain why he thought Andy Coulson’s £200,000 plus a year to do a bit of PR work was relatively small change. Another case of ” mates rates ” I think.

A very good read from Des Freedman.Obviously a very happy Christmas for the Murdoch dynasty, their friends and the Prime Minister. What could possibly go wrong now -only immortality eludes them. Very much a tale of power corrupts. Now they have absolute power they must think nothing is beyond their grasp.

Families should be together at Christmas. That’s the simple message we should take from the merry noises emanating from Rupert Murdoch’s London apartment where, on Monday night, David Cameron, George Osborne, Rebekah Brooks and a slew of top News Corp personnel joined the mogul in capping off what has been a pretty decent year for him.

This is an extremely important revelation by Bellingcat and Byline given that the Met Police have had at last to hand over huge numbers of documents to the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel which is investigating his death. It suggests a wider conspiracy by the Met Police involving more people.
It is also good news that this is one of the first projects that has been ” crowd funded” by Byline showing the need for journalists to be given time and resources to investigate very serious scandals that are in the public interest.

Dan Evans, the journalist who helped blow the story that there was phone hacking at the News of the World gets his reward. He gets a one year suspended sentence for admitting what others tried to deny.

The former Sunday Mirror and News of the World journalist Dan Evans was, today, sentenced to 10 months’ imprisonment, suspended for one year. Mr Evans had pleaded guilty to two phone hacking offences, misconduct in a public office and perverting the course of justice by lying in a civil claim brought by Kelly Hoppen.

Parliament has decided that it is a criminal offence to access the voicemails of other people without their consent or an order of the court. Parliament has decided that the offence applies to members of the press in the same way as it does to all other citizens. This law provides the same protection to all citizens including those who, for one reason or another, are in the public eye. Parliament set the maximum sentence for the offence of intercepting communications at 2 years imprisonment and Parliament has decided that the same maximum sentence applies to an offence of conspiracy which can cover, as it does in this case, a very large number of individual offences.

Further problems for Andy Coulson prior to his sentencing as Neville Thurbeck’s mitigation plea says phone hacking was sanctioned by him and Stuart Kuttner, the managing editor, who was acquitted by the jury last week.

Phone hacking at the News of the World was sanctioned by managing editor Stuart Kuttner and three other top executives at Rupert Murdoch’s UK newspaper group, one of its most senior journalists told a court yesterday.

The CPS pushes ahead with a retrial of Coulson and Goodman on bribery of police to obtain copies of internal phone directories. The prosecution also summarised its case against all FIVE News of the World journalists convicted of phone hacking. He described the News of the world as a ” thoroughly criminal enterprise” and said the five hackers should pay £700,000 between them top cover the prosecution’s costs. Another bad day for bad journalism.

Andy Coulson, former award-winning editor of the News of the World, is to face a re-trial over allegations he approved cash bribes to “palace cops” to obtain copies of phone directories for the Royal Family, the Old Bailey heard today.